She was still lobbying for that job, and Tate had to admire her grit. Every time he looked at little Marie, his heart practically turned over. She was such a cute little thing. But he wouldn’t be seeing that much of her or the boys, he reminded himself.
Getting down to business, he slid his hands into his jeans pockets. “I came over to give you my decision. If you want the job of housekeeper, it’s yours. All we can do is see how this works out. If it doesn’t, I’ll find you something else that pays better than waitressing.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Pardell. It’ll work out just fine,” she assured him, beaming.
“Tate,” he reminded her.
This time she repeated his name. “Tate.”
The sound of it on her lips made his insides jump. She caused way too many physical reactions…way too many erotic thoughts and already a couple of sleepless nights.
“When do you want me to start? I’ll have to pack, but we don’t have that much. I’ll see if I can find a neighbor with a truck—”
“No need for that. Why don’t I give you until Wednesday afternoon, when I’ll send a couple of crew members and a truck to load everything. We’ll have you settled in in no time.”
Now she came a little closer to him. “I don’t know how to thank you. I know you have your doubts about us moving in, but I’ll make it work, and you won’t be sorry.”
“We’ll see about that,” he returned gruffly. Then, before he did something stupid like kiss her, before he even had more doubts about the decision he’d made, he repositioned his Stetson on his head. “I’ll give you a call and let you know what time for sure on Wednesday.”
With a wave of his hand, he left her backyard, trying to erase the picture of her holding her little girl from his mind.
On Tuesday afternoon, the twins were in school when Anita’s doorbell buzzed. She’d been packing books from the shelves into cartons. Marie was pulling herself up on the boxes, toddling from one piece of furniture to another and stopping to play with an activity box when she got bored with everything else.
Anita opened the door and found an older couple standing there. The woman, who was a bit plump, wore an expensive-looking blouse and slacks set in a pretty shade of burgundy. Her hair was expertly styled and layered, framing her face from one corner of her lips to the other. Something about her features looked familiar—the shape of her green eyes. The man looked a bit older, with straight, graying brown hair combed over a bald spot. Again, something about his face seemed so recognizable. The suit he wore was expensively cut.
“Can I help you?” Anita asked politely, wondering what they were doing in this neighborhood.
The man spoke for them both. “We’re Ruth and Warren Sutton, Larry Sutton’s parents.”
At the mention of Larry, Ruth’s eyes glistened with tears.
Anita’s heart skipped a few beats. “His parents? Larry told me his parents were dead!”
She was in absolute shock. Not only had Larry deceived her about affairs with other women but also he’d lied about something as basic as his parents. Why?
“Dead? No, we’re very much alive,” Warren Sutton said. “Here.” He pulled out his wallet and showed Anita his driver’s license. “May we come in?” he asked.
Flustered because she’d forgotten her manners, Anita’s cheeks grew hot. “I’m so sorry. Please, do come in. The place is a mess, though. I’m moving tomorrow.”
The Suttons exchanged a look, then stepped inside.
Marie was still playing with her activity box, chortling in glee when a new face popped up as she pressed a button or pulled a lever.
“Oh, how adorable!” Ruth exclaimed, going straight to the baby.
Protectively, Anita followed her.
“Hi there, honey,” the woman said to the little girl. “Can I hold you? I’m your grandma.”
When Ruth reached out to Marie, the little girl started to cry.
“She’s shy around strangers,” Anita said, picking up her daughter and holding her close. Motioning to the sofa, she suggested, “Please, have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
The Suttons were looking around with interest. “A glass of soda would be fine,” Ruth said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Since we’re moving tomorrow, I haven’t gone for groceries. I don’t have soda. How about a glass of milk or orange juice?”
Again, the Suttons exchanged a look. “Orange juice will be fine.”
For some reason, Anita got a chill when she thought about leaving them alone in her living room. She wasn’t afraid they’d steal something, but…they made her decidedly uneasy.
Returning with the juice, Marie crawling after her, she sat in the armchair, her daughter on her lap. “You know that Larry’s…gone?” Anita asked.
“We found out about a week ago,” Warren told her. “Let me explain why you apparently didn’t know about us.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs and frowned, as if he didn’t like the telling of the story. “Unfortunately, our son was in trouble a lot in high school. He ran off several times, not returning for weeks. He cut school whenever he wanted to and hung out with a bad crowd. Six and a half years ago, he didn’t have a job or any prospects in sight. I wanted to kick him out of the house and show him some tough love, but my wife couldn’t bear to do that. One night, drunk, he was in an accident that caused permanent injury to the other driver. We paid a settlement and ordered Larry to leave and not return until he could prove that he could be responsible.”
A tear ran down Ruth’s cheek and Anita felt so sorry for her.
“Surely he contacted you after he left?” Anita commented.
“No, he didn’t,” Ruth broke in. “That’s what was so terrible. All these years, we waited for him to call us with an address where he could be reached. He never did. Then, about a month ago, something terrible happened. Some dear friends of ours had a daughter who was Larry’s age. They’d gone to school together. Paige got meningitis and died. Just like that! In two days, she was gone. Her parents were so devastated, and we were, too. It got us thinking. We wanted Larry to be a man. We wanted him to stand on his own two feet. But we never intended not to see him again. We never guessed he wouldn’t come home.”
“I had been stonewalling the idea of finding him,” Warren admitted. “I didn’t want more heartache for Ruth if he came back and hadn’t changed. My pride got in the way of my role as a father. But then Ruth convinced me that finding our son was more important than my pride and we hired a private investigator. That’s when we learned he’d been killed and that he had children—our grandchildren.”
After Larry’s death, after Anita had faced his infidelity, she’d tried to bury the betrayal. She’d tried to start over, determined to never put her future in a man’s hands again. Now the past had been resurrected and the betrayal had resurfaced, making her ache at the thought of her own stupidity and Larry’s lack of integrity.
“I’m so sorry you had to learn this way,” she murmured.
“Do you have family, dear?” Ruth asked.
“No, I don’t.”
After a glance at her husband, Ruth gave Anita an ingratiating smile. “Why don’t you tell us where you’re moving to?”
“I’m taking a position as a housekeeper. Room and board is included for me and the children.” She didn’t like giving them too much personal information, but she also didn’t want to be rude. After all, they did have ties to her children.
Just then, Anita heard the school bus rumbling down the street. Standing, she exclaimed, “I have to meet the boys outside. Today was their first whole day of school.”
“Corey and Jared?” Warren asked.
At her look of surprise, he explained, “Their names were in our private investigator’s report. Ruth thinks they are wonderful names. And we are very much looking forward to spending time with our grandsons.”
As Anita picked up Marie and went outside to greet her twins, something in Warren Sutton’s possessive tone sent another chill
down her spine.
Chapter Three
An hour later, Corey and Jared were pushing trucks around the living room, bumping into boxes, as well as their sister, and making her squeal. The Suttons listened to the boys talk about their first day at school and their teacher and made small talk with Anita. Between comments on the kids, anecdotes about Larry and repeating the guilt they felt over losing him, they interspersed personal questions for Anita.
Ruth asked, “So is this Tate Pardell single?”
“Yes, he is,” Anita admitted.
Ruth’s lips pursed. “I see.”
After Warren finished the remainder of his orange juice, he asked, “And you say you’ll be moving tomorrow?”
“I sure will.”
Taking a card from his inside jacket pocket, he handed it to her. “Would you mind contacting us and letting us know your phone number? We want to stay in touch.”
Of course she wanted the kids to stay in touch with their grandparents. But something about the Suttons was making her uncomfortable. It was the way they looked at her, the narrowing of their eyes and the probing questions. “Sure, I’ll let you know. Will you still be in town tomorrow?”
“No. We have to get back to Houston. I have a board meeting tomorrow. We’re staying with friends in Tyler tonight, then leaving early in the morning.” He rose to his feet and said to his wife, “We should be going.”
Ruth went over to Marie and attempted to pick her up, but Marie backed away and crawled quickly to her mother. After a frown, Ruth crossed over to the twins. Although Anita had explained to the boys that the Suttons were their dad’s parents, Corey and Jared had dismissed them unless they had been spoken to by one of them.
Warren tried to hunker down next to Corey, but his big stomach made it an effort. “I guess you boys will have to pack up your toys.”
“Mom says that won’t take long,” Corey told him.
“You don’t have room here for lots of toys, but I suppose you might where you’re going.”
Corey shrugged and Anita didn’t add any information.
“I suppose you’re still sad about losing your dad,” Warren prompted.
Corey’s eyes met Warren’s then. “I wish I had a dad. But my dad never played baseball with us…like Mr. Pardell did.”
Anxiety twisted Anita’s stomach as Warren looked to her for an explanation.
“When Mr. Pardell stopped by to offer me the job, he played baseball with the boys for a bit.”
“I see,” Warren said again, and Anita didn’t like the sound of his voice.
“Our son was good to you?” he asked Anita.
Anita was an honest person, and she wanted to tell the Suttons the truth. On the other hand, she didn’t want to hurt them so she trod down the middle. “Larry wasn’t here much. He often got home late or spent time with friends in the evenings.”
“He didn’t mistreat you, did he?” Warren asked gruffly.
After a slight hesitation, she answered, “No.” How did you tell in-laws that their son had been deceptive and irresponsible and cared little about his family?
Five minutes later, the Suttons had left and Anita felt shaken. They’d assured her again that they wanted to spend time with their grandchildren, and Anita didn’t know how that was going to come about. Houston was at least a five-hour drive from Clear Springs.
Marie pulled herself up onto Anita’s leg and held her little hands up for her mom to pick her up. Lifting her, Anita held her close, anxious and worried without knowing exactly why.
When Tate called Anita around 7:30 p.m., he couldn’t believe he was looking forward to the sound of her voice. He didn’t react this way to women, especially not since Donna. He let the past rise up now to remind him not to be foolish or think a woman could be trusted. Three days before they were supposed to be married, Donna had gone on an Internet spending spree to rival all others. Using Tate’s credit card number, she’d ordered jewelry, purchased a new wardrobe and booked a holiday trip for them to Tahiti for a month after their honeymoon. He’d planned their honeymoon for a secluded resort on the Texas Gulf Coast, but she hadn’t seemed excited about it.
The credit card company had called him because the purchases weren’t in line with his usual pattern, and the creditor had suspected fraud. When he’d confronted Donna about it, she played sex kitten and purred that she thought he’d consider everything she ordered a wedding present.
Tate made enough money for a secure financial future, if he didn’t blow it all. At the rate Donna expected to spend his money, he could never even think about retirement, let alone security. When he’d told her she’d have to send at least half of everything back—just to see what would happen—she’d thrown a fit. She’d tried crying first. That hadn’t worked, so she’d gotten angry. She’d let it slip that she had a friend who worked at the bank and he’d told her what Tate was worth. If her husband-to-be couldn’t see fit to spend his money on her, then she didn’t see any point in getting married.
Tate supposed he’d been a lucky man. If Donna had waited until after they were married to start her spending spree, it would have been harder to extricate himself from their relationship.
Stuffing his hand into his pocket, he fingered the money clip Donna had given him for his birthday while they were dating. He should have seen the signs. He should have realized that money clip was a symbol of what she’d wanted from him. He’d handed over his heart, but what she’d wanted instead was his checkbook.
With his memories firmly in sight, he dialed Anita’s number. She was going to become his housekeeper. Period.
But when she answered the phone, his pulse raced a little faster. “Anita, it’s Tate. How does one o’clock tomorrow afternoon sound?”
There was silence until she asked him, “Are you worried about how this is going to look?”
“How what’s going to look?” he asked, baffled.
“You being a single man. Me living there with you.”
“We’re not going to be living together, Anita. You’re going to be working for me. It’s not anybody’s business.” She’d been so gung ho about this job. What had changed her mind? “Are you having second thoughts?”
“I—” She paused. “I just never thought about how others might see it.”
“Do you care?”
There was a new certainty in her tone when she answered, “No, I don’t. I need this job. I’m not meeting expenses, and I don’t intend to mount up more credit card debt. That’s no future for my kids. One o’clock tomorrow will be fine.”
Now she sounded like the Anita Sutton who had come into his office for an interview, determined to win the position. Yet something must have happened to make her think twice about the move.
“What happened today?” he asked her.
“Nothing. Nothing important.”
The first part of her answer was a lie. The second part, probably a half truth. If Anita Sutton wasn’t straight with him, she wouldn’t be his housekeeper for long. Kids or no kids, pretty green eyes or no pretty green eyes, he’d been blind once, and he wouldn’t be blind again.
He could hear her twins laughing in the background and realized how much he wanted that laughter in his house.
“Thanks for calling, Tate. I’ll be packed up and ready to go at one tomorrow.”
After Tate said goodbye and hung up the phone, he fingered the money clip in his pocket again, reminding himself to keep his eyes wide open.
When Tate came into his house from the corral, dusting his hands on his jeans, he felt something different in the air. His house was occupied by more than just him now. To his surprise, he’d found himself driving a truck to Anita’s and helping two of his crew members pack her furniture into it. He’d also found himself helping to unload.
Afterward, she’d told him she would pick up her boys in about an hour, and that he should just go on with his day. She’d be fine.
Now, as he rounded the corner to her suite of rooms, he realized she�
��d done wonders in a short amount of time. There were no curtains yet around her sitting room windows, but throw pillows were positioned on the couch, the toy box had found its place in a corner and colorful rag rugs spotted the hardwood floors. Going to the first bedroom, he peered inside. Marie was sitting in the middle of the bed, holding a small pink blanket, sucking her thumb.
Beside the bed, Anita was struggling to lift a mattress into the crib.
“Here, let me get that.” He was inside her bedroom before he thought better of it. Crossing to the far end of the crib, he helped her lower the mattress into it.
“Thanks,” she said with a small smile. “Now all I have to do is find the sheets.”
He glanced at the boxes against the wall, labeled in black marker. “You’re an organized mover. I don’t think that will be too much of a problem.”
“When I was a kid, my mom and I moved around a lot. Not that we had that much, but I learned that if I didn’t want things to get lost, I’d better know what I’d put in each packed box.”
Crouching by the cartons, she studied her labeling, then undid the flaps on one of them.
“Why did you move around so much?”
She pulled out a sheet for the mattress in the crib. Tiny ducks danced all over the green cotton. “I wasn’t sure why we moved until I grew older. Then I realized when Momma couldn’t make the rent, we moved on.”
“Is that why you want to pay your own debts? Your mother didn’t pay hers?”
“Something like that,” she replied offhandedly as she unfolded the sheet and flapped it over the mattress.
Catching the other end, Tate helped slip the elastic down over the corners. He knew he was prying, but he wanted to know more about her. “Where was your dad?”
Avoiding his eyes, she straightened wrinkles in the sheet. “I didn’t have a dad. He left before I was born. My mother blamed him for everything that was wrong with her life.”
“How did you feel about him?”
To Protect and Cherish Page 4